RL-1    1/4-scale Model

After 10 months of developing KayakFoundry, I took a breather and  used it to create my first design - a 19' x 21" single.    It has a long waterline for speed, limited aft rocker for strong tracking,   a low aft deck for easy lay-back rolls, a shallow-arch hull for minimizing wetted surface area, a fine bow entry for cleanly slicing the water, and ample foredeck height at the cockpit to accommodate the larger paddler.

I decided to built it first as a 1/4 scale model.

Setup

To begin, I cut out the 1/4 size printed forms and pasted them onto some scrap lauan.   The forms for the entire kayak required a piece of lauan only about 8"x16".  I cut them out oversized with a jigsaw (a scrollsaw would have been better, but alas, I don't have one), and with the belt-sander clamped into a jig, I carefully sanded each form down to the line. 

Working with such small forms presented some new problems to solve.  The 1/4" lauan forms would require a different type of support than those used on a full-sized kayak and a different strongback.  I settled on a method that required a bunch of "toaster tong" clamps (they look like miniature wooden toaster tongs) and a strongback assembled with equally-spaced spacer blocks.  The clamps fit into holes in the strongback (holes defined by the spacer blocks) and are held in place with small wedges.

Hull

I managed to cut some small strips from existing, full-sized redwood and spruce strips.   The final strips were about 1/4" wide by 3/32" - 1/8" thick.   Neither dimension was exactly 1/4 scale, but thinner strips would have been hard to edge-glue and would have left litte room for sanding.  As with building a full-size kayak, fitting the keel strips was the hardest part.  For strips with a lot of twist, I glued them in two steps - I applied glue first where the strip was mostly horizontal and clamped it in place.  Once the glue had dried, I twisted the strip and applied glue to the more vertical portions.  The two-step process did make it easier to deal with the small strips.  

Deck

I finally got a chance to try the heat gun as a method for pre-bending strips.  This sure did make it easier to strip the deck.  I was able to run strips over the cockpit are using little or no clamping.  I can't wait to try this when building a full-scale kayak.  

Cockpit

The construction of the cockpit coaming was pretty straightforward.  I used the same techniques I've been using on full-sized kayaks to create the vertical coaming and cockpit rim.  No surprises here.